In recent years, the popularity of brass household accessories such as brass wall plates, brass kickboards, brass lighting fixtures, brass mailboxes and brass letters and numbers has greatly increased. Most of these products are made from brass plate which can be stamped and cut easily. Producing these products from brass plate is quite economical and problems with respect to porousity of the metal and surface of the metal are more easily controlled with respect to brass plate as opposed to brass castings. However, with respect to indicia and in particular numbers and letters these can be manufactured more economically by foundaries, primarily due to the large amount of waste or scrap material that results if these same indicia were stamped from plate. Problems with respect to colour and porousity remain, however, the cost advantage of manufacturing by casting remained critical and therefore these products continue to be produced by casting techniques.
Brass numbers or letters used to at least partially identify the address of a building or individual home, also serve a decorative purpose and therefore the brass finishes have proven popular. In particular, polished brass surfaces are now commonly used even though these numbers or letters are not easily recognizable as dusk approaches unless additional lighting is provided in close proximity to the indicia. Therefore it would be desirable to produce a brass type indicia which would provide the rich decorative effect sought by the purchasers of the product, while providing a product where the indicia was more readily recognizable with poor lighting conditions.